Introspection

The best you can do is be aware of yourself, so your actions towards others don't cause them (or you) undue pain.  Or in other words, while you may feel very negative about Ken Macha, suggesting that he be killed might not be such a good idea.

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Oakland A's

1. I love baseball.  I'll watch football and basketball occasionally, but really, baseball is the sport that I love.  I love the pace, the combination of athleticism and minute, technical skill, the beauty of the game.
2. Since moving away from the Bay Area in 1999, following the A's has been one of my few consistent, concrete connections (how's that for alliteration?) to the Bay Area.  I don't have much background in South Jersey -- the towns, politicians, places, sports stars, don't mean much to me emotionally.  Through folowing the A's, and especially through being part of AN, I can maintain a connection to a place that I truly love.  I like the fact that I've paid close attention to over 25 years of A's history -- it's nice to experience, I dunno, the depth of experience of seeing something happen and thinking, "I remember when something just like that happened against the Brewers in 1983!"

As far as the negative feelings go...we could speculate forever.  Or we could just go to HH and experience an entire community seemingly based on bitterness and anger.

Seriously, I think there are lots of reasons.  Sports, as you say, is to some extent an outlet for otherwise unacceptable behavior.  The NFL, for instance, is, as far as I can tell, merely an elaborate excuse for giving people an opportunity to gamble, get drunk in public, behave like adolescent idiots, and do some "male bonding" as a sort of replacement for the Elks, Rotary, and Lions clubs of the past.  Baseball is kind of similar -- a stadium is one of the last public spaces around, where it's easy to meet and talk with strangers, to do them favors (saving someone's seat in the bleachers when they get up to get some food) or to just chat for a few hours.

Maybe some people just want an excuse to scream abuse at other adults, to gloat obnoxiously...or maybe I just went to too many night games against the Red Sox and Yankees growing up!

i have certainly been enlightened within the past 48 hours. i almost lost my 5 year old daughter to respiratory arrest early wednesday morning. thank you to my CPR training and the el cerrito fire department, kaiser hospital in richmond and childrens hospital in oakland for all the fine work done.

see! this site offers many of us catharsis. please, let us try to stray from negativity............

Look at it this way:  I thoroughly enjoy three hours basking in the sun of a July day game, and perhaps curse on AN for twenty-five seconds of the occasional bad Crosby AB.  Time-wise I'm happy...by a lot.

But early in my adulthood, I was living a life controled by forces that I did not understand or try to change, in all honesty. One day I woke up and that force was gone and I suddenly realized I could make my own decisions, my own choices, pursue my own interests. I finally saw the light of what had been happening to me for so long!

I then turned to some friends and said, I want to go to an A's game. Not a Giants game like I was forced to attend for so many years, but an A's game! I was back in the Green and Gold and I instantly remember what it felt like to be home, to be ME again. Putting the A's back into their rightful place in my life was the first step at healing and recovering the many lost pieces of my soul.

I know it sounds cheesy, but I can honestly say I believe baseball saved my life. I am now at a place where I am happy again, I am strong and confident and simply enjoy life. I couldn't say that 3 years ago. And baseball, the A's, had a huge hand to play in that.

So for me, yes, I get frustrated. There are definately moments where I want to bang Macha's head against a very large wall! But the joy that I get out of the game simply out weighs all of that. There are too many moments of bliss and excitement to LET those bad moments effect me for too long.

Through all the roller coaster moments within a season, the game really, truly brings me peace. It is a part of who I am, a part that I lost for so long, I can't imagine being without it again! So I will take every high with every low, just play ball!!

The projection of it onto the web in full view of "mixed company" so to speak can be disturbing to rest of us in that "mixed company".

But in the last twenty years or so, things have shifted some, so that many fans now only find glory in 'the season'. You could watch 18 one-run games in person in which your team emerges victorious, but if you don't make the World Series, the season is a loss to these people - a waste of time.

And when you consider that only two teams will make the Series, there's only a 6% chance that these people will be happy at the end of each season, which basically explains why such folks are always so damn angry at their team, even when said team is traveling pretty well.

My brother in law is one of those folks. He'll yell at the TV screen if his football team makes a bad play, and I'm not talking "damn it", I'm talking "ROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRRFUCKINGFUCK!"

In the UK, soccer teams that are in the bottom end of the division have something to play for all year long - avoiding demotion. That means that such teams can take a humungous amount of pride from a late season unexpected victory, or an unlikely climb out of the relegation zone, and thus turn that season into anything but a failure. Baseball fans don't have that option - if we're notwinning it all, it's failure.

And that's why I'd like to see Triple-A champions play off for the right to be 'promoted' to the Majors in place of the worst MLB team.

I'm thinking we'd see less Kansas city Royals-style owners if that were possible... and I'm thinking we'd start taking a lot more pleasure from our .500 seasons too.

Being a fan is worth it over long period of times and winning is about as good a feeling as you can get.  Winning a game, winning in life, winning the girl of your dreams, winning at frickin' Scrabble for gosh sakes.  Losing just isn't fun but, thankfully, I've always been mature enough to deal with the negative side too.

As a fan I seethed every time Rincon came out to give the game up, or knowing that TLong would strike out. Watching in horror a playoff game in Minnesota. Recently I recall watching Jay Payton seemingly loose all his skills and flounder like the Little Leaguers I coach. And yes, wondering why Macha did this or didn't do that. It only matters so much because we love it.

That is why watching BP is so great, watch the players as a few will make their way over to chat with friends from their last team, or a roommate from the minors, or a teammate who was traded. This is their job, while we outside, watching, place so much more on it.

I was raised as an A's fan, If I were to move to Boston or LA or Pittsburgh, I would still be an A's fan. I think being a fan, a passionate fan, means growing up with that team. Not just picking a team to follow. This last week is a prime example; I shouted in joy as Big Frank went deep again, and squirmed with each Twin hit, but I didn't break my remote, kick my dog or smash the TV. That's baseball, and luckily I see the A's win more than lose.

Let's Go Oakland!

Bottom line: we react this way because we are really, really into it, so into it that, yes, sometimes it can border on the unhealthy.  I feel the ability of the city in which I live -- a city that gets the most ridiculously bad rap of almost any city I have ever been in -- to hang onto its baseball team (one of its most necessary and vital assets) depends on the success of said team in the current window of time here to conceive, plan and execute a new ballpark plan.  I realize as well that if we were to somehow actually WIN something this season, a new ballpark would be much, much more likely in Oakland because after all it is WINNING that provokes real interest from the heretofore-only-marginally-attuned people and powers whose attention would be required to get it done (Mayor, City Council, other possible private developers with additional money, etc.).  You're dealing with people who are much more likely NOT to want to be the ones on the hook for letting a championship team get away, and you need a championship to put that pressure on them.

I care so much because I really feel that the future of this team (and this team is something for the city to be proud of, placing as it does a product of intrigue and excellence on the field year in and year out on such a limited budget) in this area hangs in the balance right now, but of course that's not the only reason.  Obviously I am an obsessive baseball nut and would hike barefoot over broken glass to see almost any baseball game, and this particular team (being so scientifically-minded and statistically-obsessive) is great fun to root for and analyze because Beane and them have so much creativity and braniac stuff going on as you peel away the layers of their particular onion.  We also have players, like Chavez (he of the poetic, mind-frying defensive prowess) and Thomas (a magical player and near-certain Hall of Famer, certainly the greatest player ever in the 100-year history of his former team) and Zito (one of the true eccentric personalities in the game and possessor of the best curveball in the majors) who are nearly impossible NOT to root for.  So when you add it all up, I guess you could say that I'm obsessed with this team, as we all are on this, of course the flagship sports blog in all the world.

I grew up in NYC, a Mets fan who saw his first game at age 2 in the Miracle summer of 1969, but I was too young to remember what Amazing things happened then.  In 1973 my neighbor's dad had season tickets to Shea Stadium, and I got to go to many great games as a baseball-freak 6 1/2 year old boy.  That fall, I experienced my first true sports heartbreak, at the hands of some guys who all had very elegant and sharp moustaches.

20 years ago I had the luck and privilege to see the (occasionally brilliant, often terrible, always underdog) team I grew up rooting for and obsessing over put together a most magical and improbable season, culminating with that impossible ball squirting through Buckner's legs on the evening of my 20th birthday and then with the trophy of trophies 2 days later.   Those memories will last a lifetime, maybe longer.

14 years ago I moved to SF, and then to Oakland 7 years ago, soon becoming the green-and-gold-bleeding A's fan that I am now, nearing the age of 40.  To see this most underdog of teams in this most underdog of cities, so in need and so very deserving of a fine new facility, get over the hump and somehow shock the world in these next 7 weeks would just be too much, my head would explode with joy... it would blow away what I experienced 20 years ago, which was pretty satisfying and special.  Add to that the idea that it could possibly be via a 1973 rematch and it's dizzying, the symmetry of my life and baseball and how they have intertwined.

Which is what made Macha's idiocy of the other night make me so mad, knowing that because we operate with such a slim margin for error and so much has to fall into place for us to win the ring, we simply cannot afford to lose games like that, especially to the other good, worthy and hungry squads like the Twins who are gunning for the same coveted prize.  I am probably crazy for caring about this stuff like I do, but I have a feeling there are those here who can empathize, and I certainly do apologize for letting my rage at what happened on Tuesday night get me as worked up as it did.

• Last year, for the first time, I organized a First Aid and CPR training for 7th graders who were interested. With the CPR course, I told them "You'll probably never need it, but if you ever do you'll be so glad you did the course." So, yeah, get trained just in case you need it...
• My friend ranted, after Tuesday's game, that he couldn't bear to follow the A's so closely next year, because the roller-coaster ride was just too stressful, and that he was just going to get daily updates. I suggested he do the same with his daughter--don't spend any time with her and just get daily updates from his wife on how things are going.

I lived and died with them all these years, even through some of the 90 loss teams. Once they started winning during the Bash Brothers era, I always remembered what it was like when they lost so many games in the years before, and it tempered my anger when they lost. Even the World Series (damn Gibson!)

Ahem...

One of the things about the fans on this site that does bother me is the negativity that pops up so quickly. I understand fustration, but geeze. Then the flip people do when someone starts doing well. I understand its human nature, but its almost bi-polar  lol  LIke everyone who now loves Jason Kendal  :P

We have a really fun team this year, one of the most entertaining I have seen yet, but we have to temper that with the knowledge that they aren't exactly without holes. Can they win in the playoffs? Yes, for sure. Will they? Maybe. Lets enjoy the rest of this season and root for them, get out to the games (I heard that there are only 25,000 expected for the friday game. We need MORE to show up!) No one will take us seriously unless we start to show up for good and important games, like this weekend. The press makes fun of us because we don't show up to more games. I know we all can't, all the time. I know I can't afford to go to too many, but we, as fans, need to spread the word of this team and get more of our friends to go. We need to do something more then just complain.

I love the A's, no matter who wears the uniform. So, stop grouching about the manager (who IS doing a good job), instead of booing players, and instead of death threats (ugh!), ROOT for the team. Being passionate doesn't give you the right to be an ass  :P

Now I'm rambling. Forgive me. I too care, but some of the comments here make me stay away when things aren't going well. Its sad to read some of the stuff.

Lets head out to this last homestand and have some real fun!

Then bring on the playoffs!

When I put in that kind of emotional energy into anything, I become very attached. Watching the A's for six straight months, year in and year out, since I was nine, has forged a very strong bond with this team, whether that is right or wrong. I feel that passion more strongly sometimes than I do with some people in my life; the A's are something I have built a relationship with and grown to love, and naturally, have very strong feelings for. I don't know any other way to live. I'm not a casual friend--and in the same way, I'm not a casual fan. I thrown myself into everything I love with 100% of my energy.

That is GREAT except, of course, during the times when I feel that someone who is in charge of my baseball team is giving less than 100%--whether it be by sheer stupidity or deliberate choice. There are times when I feel that Ken Macha cannot possibly care about the Oakland A's more than I do. And that's probably an accurate statement.

The passion and venom expressed by fans when Macha does something that jeopardizes the ball club is not surprising to me, because I'm right there in it. It's a feeling of helplessness, since there isn't anything I can do, except sit back and watch the train wreck unfold.

Most of us on this site watch or listen to roughly all 162 games of the season; we have more time than Ken Macha to study the players, and we have statistics at our fingertips to play the 20/20 hindsight game. A lot of the time, we are not speaking blindly when we ask for a pitching change; we have just as much of a 'gut feeling' as does Macha--this is our team too, and we know them and their performances inside out by the end of the year.

It would be safe to say that no one on AN thought it was a good decision to start Mulder in 2004 against the Angels in game #160. We had all watched him struggle, we KNEW something wasn't right, and it was a no-brainer. Mulder was going to get rocked, and probably a casual fan could have predicted that. But living with the team, day-in-and-day-out and watching it all slip away in one game was gut-wrenching, and heart-breaking in a way that a well-played loss is not. I can handle losing. What I can't handle is stupidly losing.

Any time you leave a reliever in a game to give up three earned runs (that were NOT scored on a homerun) in the bottom of the eighth inning of a game you need to win, you have not done your job as a manager. Period. If you have anyone but your best reliever give up the lead late in a game, with little hope of getting it back, you have also not done your job. If Duchscherer blows it, tip your hat to Minnesota and take the "L". But to not have him in a game until you have already lost was criminal.

And I can forget Tuesday's loss. It turned out not to matter. But we are going to soon play games that will matter. I can handle the A's getting out-played. I can. Tip your hat and kudos to the better team.

But what will fire me up, just like 2003 and 2004, will be if Ken Macha does not pull out ALL the stops to win the game in front of him, and put it all on the line to take our beloved A's as far as they can possibly go.

And because of my passion for the team, and my all-or-nothing fandom, I will try to separate the team's failures from the manager's, but there are times--more than I'd like to remember--when you can hang a big-loss game on Macha. I certainly don't wish him any ill will--I actually think he's a nice, funny guy, but I am scared to death of a September collapse/early-October exit.  

Tuesday brought all those fears to the surface, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who panicked. It wasn't about losing that game in particular, it was about fast-forwarding three weeks and losing that game.

Just my two cents. (or $20...)

That experience fostered a detachment within me that I carry to this day. I love the A's, and I think I've proven that I know of what I speak when I discuss the A's. But the losses have never hurt as much. At the same time the wins have never felt quite as good as they seem to for other people.

So why do I cheer for my teams? Probably because they give me something to think about when Life or Work is a little on the dull side.

Bill King.

Bill meant so much to us Bay Area native sports fans.  All of went through so many emotions after his sudden passing last year, and in our campaign to get Bill into the HoF (it will happen, just like an A's postseason series victory will!).  Bill and Lon made it impossible for me to stop listening to A's games, even when the team was absolutely hopeless -- and when people complain about Macha, I try to remind myself, "I remember when Steve Boros and Jackie Moore 'managed' the team -- I can live through this!"

With all the excitement of the pennant drive, it's easy to think about the immediate task at hand (although if I were listening on the radio to Vince I'd probably feel differently!).  But Bill's absence is a void in A's fandom that everyone knows will never be filled.

That kind of experience and relationship -- and the promise of future relationships if we stick with it -- helps me get through the frustrations of bad games, slumps, and down years.

I think that many fans take on the role as team motivator and don't want to reward anything less than total victory because it might make the team soft (see Philadephia, City of), because that's the model of motivation they know. Treat people like crap until they perform better.

And once you see fans around you acting that way, that encourages you because you see it's allowed.  American team sports allow that kind of negative motivation, but it's not something that has to be so. For instance, in tennis, you wouldn't scream at your favorite player that they are a loser because they made an unforced error, or you wouldn't yell "Damn it TIGER, you ALWAYS slice out of the rough, you bum!" It's just not in the culture. Or you wouldn't stand up in a musical and yell, GODDAMNIT, HIT THOSE HIGH NOTES!

Personally, I think it's the wrong choice to make as a fan. For a practicing athlete, artist, scholar, I can see why you would trade happiness, balance and calm temporarily for focus and excellence. But as a fan, you can choose to vent all your negative feelings (and make those around you miserable too), or you can appreciate the skillful, the beautiful, the miraculous aspects of sports.  Because to be a baseball fan is to guarantee seeing your team lose almost as much as they win, and you will be forced to confront more negative results than the heart was made to endure. If you bring a crate full of negativity, you are going to be pretty unbearable for everyone around you.

I will sometimes play a computer game and scream and shout at the fictional enemies I'm fighting.  It lets me get out some minor frustrations of the day and afterward I feel better.  Personally, I don't use baseball that way, but I understand why others do.

Some people have more unhappiness than others.  You and I are lucky to have relatively happy lives.  Some people have deep reserves of unhappiness and frustration buried inside their souls. Maybe it's from having a hard life, maybe it's from having to take abuse that couldn't be resisted at the time, or maybe it's just from being a naturally bitter person. Usually we're not even aware of where our negative energy comes from.

Whatever the source, we need to express it. If some people have more negativity to express than others, that explains why they turn more quickly to violent expressions of anger and hate.  To those of us who don't have the same negativity inside of us, it can be very alarming.  Nevertheless, so long as it can be done in a way that doesn't actually hurt anyone in real life, we should be glad that the person found that opportunity to get rid of a little more of the poison he's carrying inside and is thus one step closer to inner peace.

Here in Dominican Republic, we're very intense baseball fans, we live and die for it, and wanna tell a short story that reflects the "kill" thing, here it is:

In a very important game, in the final series of national baseball, a player struck out in a very important moment of the game, when he was walking back to the the dogout, some fan shout "you mother fu****", the batter stop and try to go after the fan, then the fan tell him "hey man, chill out, I'm talking about your Stadium's mother, not your real one; the batter just stop and smile and entered the dogout"

So, the "kill" thing is just another type of "Stadium's mother". we don't mean, at least I don't, :D.

LET'S GO OAKLAND!!!

It's funny, my husband doesn't even like sports. At all. We're an odd couple. I'm the one who watches baseball every night and plays in three fantasy football leagues, and he'd rather just play video games and watch horror movies.

So since he's not into sports, he doesn't understand my A's fanaticism and I've given up trying to explain it to him. It just is what it is!

I know for me, personally, I'm more prone to be vocal when I'm suffering with the game than loving it. Not because I enjoy being miserable, but because when it's one of those glorious, heart-pounding wins, it's something I can enjoy by myself -- screaming on the floor, curled up in front of the TV, eyes wide. I don't feel the urge to come on and talk a whole lot about it other than squeeing a bit because honestly, there's only so many times I can add "Me too!" to the love of Frank Thomas, or Chavez, or whoever the hero-du-jour is.

But when something bad happens, "Misery loves company" proves itself true. I feel a hell of a lot better commiserating with people here, it makes me feel a lot better to come here to vent -- to scream, to type really ugly words and curse Macha and ask for him to be fired and Brandon Buckley to manage in his place. It means getting it out here, and trying to exorcise that anger outta my life.

The game's changed my life in a lot of ways. Yeah, it makes us miserable enough for non-sports-understanding-people to get it (I cried more than I probably should have when Huddy got traded. Damn hormones and Billy Beane working in sync). But it has given me so much, so many personal and wonderful family memories were born at the Coliseum. I can't tell you much about my classes from my first year of college, but I can tell you in detail about some of the games that happened the summer after.

When my anxiety began to take over my life and make it difficult to function, the game gave me inspiration to keep going and to leave my house, going to games was the motivation for me to learn to cope with social situations and crowds that had left me absolutely paralyzed. The green and gold gave me my life back, so I have little shame about being absurdly cranky when the team loses.

It's why I don't get the appeal of football -- sixteen games? What's that? Nothing. We spend 162 games with these guys, 486ish hours of the regular season. I see these guys a hell of a lot more than my extended family.

I mean, even when the team was crappy for years, and even when it makes you miserable, it gives a CONSISTANT sense of miserable -- how many things in our lives are as predictable as Spring Training in February, as knowing the World Series will be in October? When there's nothing else certain, there's always the game to come home to. Six months of the year where the team will at least be there, if nothing else.

It's just like being back in Little League -- showing up really DOES count in a lot of ways.

I get stressed over baseball. It's unhealthy. But dammit, there's worse things in the world than loving a team too much and blowing off steam. It's just sick and twisted proof of love, and love is a damn fine thing.

But I don't "live and die" with them, either literally or figuratively.  Baseball is a game that I love to follow, but it's still a game.  Perhaps this is my perspective because I didn't grow up with baseball, I've never played it, I have no "tradition" with it nor fond childhood memories of it.  I came into baseball fandom as an adult, during a time when there were a lot of personal difficulties, real living and dying going on, and going to a game was a break from some harsh realities.  There's somewhat of a relief in knowing the huge difference between "being depressed" over an A's losing streak, and depression.

Having said that...  I usually enjoy AN game threads, they're usually kind of fun (or at least cathartic) even when the A's are losing.  There's usually a good balance between the devoted malcontents, and the people who understand when a hearty "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!" needs to be applied.  Tuesday night's balance was way off for some reason, tipped too far in the direction of some really heinous garbage.  I don't think being a passionate fan is any excuse for death jokes, and typing is not a "heat of the moment" type of reaction.  Generally, game threads only move that fast when a player has just done something really great or really horrible; the rest of the time, people have time to consider what they write.  I spoke up because I felt several people who were spewing a pretty unusual level of hatred that night should at least hear another reaction besides "haha I'm with you."